


A belated

by mayachain



Series: birthday!verse [19]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Birthday, Cross-Generational Friendship, M/M, Post-Canon, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-13
Updated: 2012-03-13
Packaged: 2017-11-01 21:46:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/361614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mayachain/pseuds/mayachain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>March 13th, 2012</p>
            </blockquote>





	A belated

On the day before his fifty-second birthday, Remus woke up and immediately wished to slip back into unconsciousness. Needing time to recover after the full moon was nothing new. This was worse. It felt as if a Hippogriff had used him as a Bludger.

“Thank Merlin,” he heard a familiar voice say. Someone – someone else? – slid a hand under his head and held a cup to his lips. Through the fog, Remus recognized the strongest morning-after potion Severus had in his collection and took a grateful sip. But it wasn’t Severus doing the administering, these were – Neville’s, they were Neville’s hands, he recognized that earthy scent even with his human nose. Except Remus wasn’t teaching this year and this felt like his and Severus’ bed and that had been Draco’s voice and really, he was in far too much pain for such a complicated train of thought.

He hadn’t felt this bad since his being a werewolf had saved him from the Killing Curse.

“What happened,” he rasped after Neville had let him sink back into the pillows. He closed his eyes as the room tilted around him. Morning After always made him dizzy. 

There was a soft thud as Neville carefully placed the cup on the bedside table. From a few feet to Remus’ right, Draco cast a simple diagnostic spell. No one replied until the relief started to set in and Remus dared open his eyes again. 

The answer he got was something he never would have expected. In a carefully measured voice, Draco informed him, “You didn’t change back after the full moon.”

A weak “What...?” was all he could manage. The room spun.

“The sun came up, but you were still Moony,” Neville tried. It didn’t sound any better put like that. 

Remus knew his mind wasn’t at its best at the moment, but something like that had never happened in almost fifty years of monthly transformations. He was also certain that the available literature, limited though it was, was very clear. The curse taking effect for longer than a single night... shouldn’t have been possible. 

“Something went wrong with the Wolfsbane potion,” Draco said, which Remus would have accepted thirteen years ago when he’d been relying on experimental brews out of St Mungo’s, but Severus prepared his Wolfsbane and Severus didn’t make mistakes. So he waited, and after a few seconds Draco added, “Or rather, with the wolfsbane itself.”

Good. Or not good, not good at all, but better. Remus breathed for a minute and then tested his limits by attempting whole sentences. “Severus would have thrown out the potion. He would have made me use something less effective from my emergency stash if there had been the slightest indication that something was wrong.” 

Neville gave a short grunt of assent and got up from his crouch. It took Remus a minute to realize he’d begun pacing. 

“The supply in his lab looked perfectly fine,” Draco confirmed. 

“ _Fine,_ ” Neville repeated darkly. “You can’t tell once they’ve been cut, I told you. I went to the Cresswell greenhouse and looked at the aconite beds. They were... You know what I teach my students? My _first year students?_ ” Merlin, Remus hadn’t seen Neville this angry since one of Hagrid’s knarls had gotten into Greenhouse three. “ _Talk to your plants!_ It’s not hard! They don’t even talk back! –well, the aconite doesn’t! It just likes to listen!”

From what Remus knew of Herbology, it didn’t matter much how plants were brought up if you just wanted to poison someone. He also knew that Tonks had used wild aconite for his Wolfsbane during the war. The effect had been... not ideal, but far better than what he’d had to rely on during the first months after her death. If grown specifically for medical purposes, on the other hand... 

“I’ve already thought of six different ways you could sue them,” Draco supplied. 

“Sue them?” Neville exclaimed. “They should be so lucky and only have you sue them. I’m going to talk to Percy Weasley about this. They will _lose their license._ ”

‘Good,’ Remus thought. Mistakes could happen to anyone, of course, but he didn’t exactly feel forgiving at the moment and he strongly doubted Severus would. Which begged the question he’d dreaded to ask so far. “Where’s Severus?”

“We put him in Teddy’s room with a sleeping drought. He hadn’t slept for three days when he called us.”

Seeing as the man had never learned to sleep in Moony’s presence, it made – wait. “Three days?”

Draco looked down his short nose at him. “You did get the part where you didn’t change back after the full moon?”

“...How long?”

“Five days. Six if you count the initial change. By the way, you’re fifty-two now, you owe your son supper in Hogsmeade.” 

“Oh my.” At least it wasn’t the first time a full moon had belayed a party. “...I’m not a wolf now.”

“No.” Neville sat down, tension drawn out of him, a cut string. “We had to keep giving you Wolfsbane – luckily, your emergency stash is from last year and made from aconite that _I_ grew. It took some time, but at around four last night the old potion cancelled out the bad effects of the new one. I’m sure Severus can tell you all about it.”

Remus nodded. Perhaps by the time the sleeping drought had worn off he would even feel up to grasping all the details. ‘I was Moony for _five days._ ’ He had no doubt that both he and Severus would take a whole new set of nightmares away from this. For now, he wanted only to down the rest of the Morning After and wait it out. “Could you tell Teddy...”

“I’ll floo Minerva right away.”

Watching Neville leave, Remus wondered if there was any dignified way to ask if one of them could levitate his sleeping potions master into bed with him.

“He’ll never let you go to outside suppliers again, you know,” Draco murmured. Remus’ smile was weak but, he hoped Draco could see, sincere. At some point, they would have to address his family’s reluctance to call any actual healers, but not now.

“Neville or Severus?”

“Both.”


End file.
